


i've known your heart

by philthestone



Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Fluff, Missing Scenes, Season 2 Timeline, also mrs crook. a legend, be the soft content u want to see in the world i say as i write 50 versions of the same story, implied/referenced faith storyline, in the 'cant believe its not butter' voice: cant believe its not an au!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27791761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: They watch as Jamie presses a smacking kiss to Maggie’s chubby cheek. Beside Claire, Jenny snorts.“He’s been like this since we were bairns,” she says, in answer to the unasked question. Her eyes roll with the fond impatience unique to siblinghood. “Touchy an’ clingy like a wee limpet.Can ye gi’ me a kiss g’night, Janet?Right after he’d announced he’d be comin’ wi’ me tae feed the chickens tomorrow lest he had tae protect me frombearsalong the way.”Claire must puff out her cheeks to smother her laughter. "I'm sure Lallybroch was rife with bears," she says, and thinks that there is something inherently healing about the concept ofhome.
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp & Jenny Fraser, Claire Beauchamp & Murtagh Fraser, Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser, Claire Fraser & Maggie Murray, Jamie Fraser & Fergus Fraser, Jamie Fraser & Jenny Fraser, Jenny Fraser/Ian Murray, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 119





	i've known your heart

**Author's Note:**

> set in the year between season 2a and 2b, when they came back to lallybroch and actually had time to breathe
> 
> i keep saying im done writing for a while and then i write more things and hope sincerely that they are not all variations on the exact same theme. em told me this was good so im posting it (love u em)
> 
> the title is from the beautiful song of the same name by ajimal, linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TSfcInPIE0

i.

There’s something inherently restorative about a _home_. 

Claire, dedicated to healing others though she may be, learns this belatedly. But that is not entirely her own fault.

“Hold _still_ ,” she says, as Murtagh twitches his hand away for the tenth time. They are sitting in the kitchen. Mrs. Crook is cajoling the chickens to attend their luncheon just beyond the open doorway; Jamie and Ian are in the potato fields with Fergus and some of the other young men; Jenny’s seeing to the washing and Claire thinks absently that she last saw Wee Jamie and Maggie rolling around in the dirt with the dogs.

“Aye, weel ye keep jabbin’ me, woman!” 

He is red-faced, sweaty from work in the outdoors, but has groomed his whiskers since arriving five days ago. He looks at ease, Claire thinks. Far more than he did in Paris. She digs her tweezers a bit deeper into his palm. It really is a miniscule splinter; Claire is worried about infection.

“That is rather the _point_ ,” she says, and refrains from informing him that he looks the part of a pink-hued storm cloud.

“Ye’re takin’ th’whole feckin’ hand off, ‘t feels like.”

“Big baby,” Claire says. She debates whether or not it’s terribly funny how quickly he’s adopted _her_ curse words, then gives the sliver of wood one final yank. “Aha!”

Murtagh lets loose a string of unintelligible Gaelic. 

From beyond the doorway, Mrs. Crook’s voice sounds, righteous: 

“If’n the bairns can hear ye, it’ll be _yer_ hide, Master Fitzgibbons!”

Claire smothers her laughter. 

“I didna ken it’d be this painful havin’ children,” Murtagh mutters under his breath. 

She is midway through wiping the angry red spot with alcohol, and she doesn’t quite falter, but holds onto the older man’s calloused palm for one more heartbeat. His dark eyes are glittering, but gentle. Quietly, Claire leans over and presses a kiss to his scruffy cheek.

“Off with you then,” she says, and he goes, with another round of exaggerated grumbling.

ii.

They’re shelling peas together in the courtyard, Claire thinking absently about the roses she planted along the back wall last spring, when they notice the tableau unfolding across from them. Jamie is in the middle of showing little Maggie how to play fetch with Bran. Fergus and Rabbie and Wee Jamie act as giggly observers, and Maggie, quite determined, keeps tossing the stick down immediately at her own feet, while Bran makes himself a floppy-tongued nuisance and wags his tail. 

They watch as Jamie presses a smacking kiss to Maggie’s chubby cheek. Beside Claire, Jenny snorts.

“He’s been like this since we were bairns,” she says, in answer to the unasked question. Her eyes roll with the fond impatience unique to siblinghood. “Touchy an’ clingy like a wee limpet. _Can ye gi’ me a kiss g’night, Janet_? Right after he’d announced he’d be comin’ wi’ me tae feed the chickens tomorrow lest he had tae protect me from _bears_ along the way.”

Claire must puff out her cheeks to stop laughing. “I’m sure Lallybroch was rife with bears.” 

“Infested,” Jenny agrees solemnly. 

There is an ache in her heart she ignores; she’s been holding Kitty all afternoon, and it’s helped, somewhat. She watches Jenny’s pea-shelling technique. It’s very efficient. 

“I was never like that,” Jenny continues. If she has noticed Claire’s ache, she has only responded by allowing the uninterrupted holding of her infant daughter. “But then he went gallivantin’ off tae God kens where an’ found _you_. So I suppose it was all fer the best.”

Jenny’s hair is wrapped up in a fresh linen kerchief and her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, apron tied with regimented precision. Her cheeks are rosy from exertion, brows -- so much darker than her brother’s but near identical in shape and intensity -- framed by loose strands of hair. She looks very much in her element.

“If you could go gallivanting anywhere,” Claire says, giving Kitty a bounce. “Where would you go?”

Her sister-in-law freezes, thumb stuck in one half-opened pod. 

“Ye’re serious?”

She nods. Across the courtyard, Wee Jamie starts howling with laughter over something only a four-year-old might find funny.

“Rome,” Jenny says, sounding shy for the first time since Claire’s known her. “I -- weel. I’d like tae see th’paintings. An’ such. Maybe -- do some myself.”

Claire nods again, her smile slowly taking root and growing. 

“I’d tire of it fast, though,” Jenny adds, somewhat severely. “Loungin’ about wi’ a paintbrush when there’s things tae be done. Hmph! Christ, I’d go nutty in a week. But it’d be a nice week, all the same.”

She grins; Claire grins back. There is sunlight bouncing off the discarded pea shells.

iii.

She wakes up in the blue-black darkness of their bedroom, slowly, like awareness is fading into her. Beside her, Jamie is crying softly.

Claire sits up. Her hand trembles just a little as first she presses it against his bare collarbone, then over his cheek. It’s wet under her hand.

“Jamie,” she says. 

General experience has her ready for tension, and the taught-bow-string effect of nighttime fear. She knows how to move if he jerks awake, larger than her and still-dreaming. 

But her shoulders unclench; he’s more or less relaxed under her palm.

“Darling,” she says, just a little pleading, when he doesn’t respond the first time.

“Sorry.” His voice is gravelly, and sleep-heavy. “‘M alright.”

“You’re not,” Claire says. She refuses to also cry. 

“I’m fine,” he says. It is not forceful, or defensive. Only quiet. “I jus’ -- I jest. I didna mean tae -- to start weepin’. I dinna ken what happened.” 

In the dark of their bedroom he sounds small, like something she can cradle in her hands. It makes the bends of her knees feel blunted, and her arms numb and fumbly. But she only nods, and slides back down under the covers, and wraps herself around him. He goes easily, turning into her embrace. She can feel his wet eyelashes against the bare skin of the side of her breast.

Together, they breathe until their breathing evens out.

iv.

Claire has Maggie perched on her hip as she finally harvests her primroses. She had planted them last year -- before everything -- and something about their presence now feels hopeful, or untouched, like they waited for her to come back home. 

They bloomed. 

Maggie had begged to be allowed to help pick them earlier, in bubbly toddler-voiced tones.

“How many have we got so far, lovey? How many? That’s two there! That’s two more, see?”

“Two two two two,” Maggie trills happily. She’s fair-haired as her father and just as good natured, too. Sometimes her sticky fingers get stuck in Claire’s curls, but she has suffered less sweet things. “ _Woses_ , Auntie Cwaire.”

“Yes that’s right, darling, primroses. You know they’re very good for easing sore things? _And_ for lady problems. Your Mama will be very pleased with all the things that these can do.” 

Maggie nods in delight, dubious though her comprehension of medicinal herbology may be. The thin strands of her golden hair are bright even under the overcast sky.

Scotland’s summers are as unpredictable as one might have expected, but Claire does not mind the quietude of a cloudy day. It means she does not have to tend to Jamie and Ian’s sunburned shoulders in the evenings. 

“And that’s one for your brother, and one for your wee sister, and one for your Da -- oh, Maggie, be careful of the thorns.”

“One fo’ Unca Jamie,” she explains, holding up her prize. The stem is torn up from the wrong point, and so has splintered. But she cups it in two hands with an endearing degree of focus, and Claire feels her throat constrict at the careful delicacy of her usually active fingers.

“Is that right?” Claire asks, hoisting the little girl higher upon her side.

Maggie nods with blue-eyed solemnity. “Woses fo’ evewyone we wuv,” she recites, sing-song like Claire had been doing earlier. She places the lopsided rose gently down into Claire’s basket, frocked little legs dangling. “Stay pwease,” she tells it, the way Ian speaks to Bran.

“They’re sure to listen to you,” Claire says, “as you’re such a well-mannered little girl.”

“One fo’ ye too, Auntie Cwaire.”

Maggie’s weight is warm and grounding in her arms. There is a soft breeze, and Claire feels it now, light and cool on her face. She holds her tiny niece closer to her and says, “Thank you very much, Margaret.”

“Y’welcome,” Maggie says sweetly, understanding as any child can be.

v.

Once again one of them is incapable of sleep, only this time comfort has been found in the near-delirious silliness of midnight roughhousing.

“ _Shhhsh_ , ye’ll wake the _house_ \--”

“ _You shhhhsh_ \--”

“Ye dinna want a nice birthday rodgerin’, is tha’ what yer sayin’?” 

Claire smacks Jamie’s pillow against the side of his head and scrambles to the other end of the bed, both of them nearly hysteric with giggles. The bedroom is not fully dark but burgundy coloured, faintly lit with two stalwart candles set on the corner of Claire’s little vanity. She is not sure if there is any true _need_ undercutting the tussle -- perhaps there always is, a little bit, since that very first memory of his hands on her -- but play-wrestling with her Viking-sized husband is proving an easy distraction from everything she does not want to dwell on. 

“My birthday’s three _months_ from now,” she says, strained with smothered laughter. They are both making sure to speak in whispers; everyone else is asleep.

“Semantics, Sassenach,” Jamie says breathlessly, as though this is obvious. “Ye dinna have early birthday presents in yer time?” 

His eyes are tired but dancing. He’s fumbly this late at night, but still faster than she is, and grabs one of her feet to pull her across the bed such that she falls, bouncing, upon her back, arse bared. She looks up at him. His curls are sticking up in odd places, and his sark rumpled and pulled nearly off of one shoulder. She can see that lone freckle dotting one of his pale thighs, under the soft dusting of ginger-gold hair.

“ _Present_ , hmm? That’s awfully presumptuous of you, Mister Fraser.”

“Och, ye wee fart.”

Claire’s face is smothered by enemy pillow with a muffled _phump_. She squeaks, and sticks her bare toes into his hipbone where his shirt has ridden up, confident in her knowledge of his ticklish spots.

“Claire!” he yelps, no longer in a whisper, nearly jumping off the bed. 

Something about this reaction is beyond funny to her; Claire crows with laughter. It feels like they are suspended in dreamstate, this late at night. She makes to get up again and he is immediately upon her, an exaggerated growl deep in his throat, wrapping warm arms around her from behind in one long-limbed motion and letting them both fall backward onto the mattress. Claire is giggling -- she cannot _stop_ giggling. She keeps at it until she is out of breath completely, and then lies, gasping for air, atop her husband’s strong body. 

In the shadow-y candlelight, she can barely make out the tapestry above her.

“I missed ye,” he says, quiet beneath her. She can’t see his face. His hands are large over her ribcage and stomach, where her shift hides slivery stretch marks. She brings her own hands up to cover his, skin against scarred skin, and wonders if they could stay lying like this for the rest of the night.

“I missed you too,” she whispers, and means it so very much. 

vi.

“-- so then Jen said, _Laney Campbell, I’d skelp ye alive if God hadnae already punished ye wi’ that awful nose of yers!_ ”

“She _didn’t_!”

“As sure as truth she did. Puir lass went th’ colour of soured milk. Ye can ask Mrs. Crook, _she_ was there --”

“Weesht! I didna say any such thing, ye dinna listen tae him now. I walloped her wi’ Mam’s old kitchen spoon, is what I did.”

“It didna hurt tha’ Ian fancied Laney Campbell at the time.”

“I did no’!”

“He _did_ , somethin’ fierce! Eight years old an’ heid o’er heels! Anyhow, she may ha’ done the wallopin’ as well, who can ken -- Fergus, dinna move yer rook there, I can take yer queen in twa moves -- an’ the wee Laney Campbell could be heard howlin’ from here tae the river.”

“Now watch this lad, he’ll make the wailin’ noise --”

“Dinna ye _dare_ , James Fraser, there’re bairns asleep!”

Jamie, stretched out on his belly in front of the fireplace, is already bright-eyed from his emphatic retelling and has started laughing so hard Claire swears she can see tears in his eyes. Ian is not fairing much better; he sits slumped in the armchair opposite the fire, one hand pressed over his face and the other clutching his prosthetic leg as he slowly falls to pieces with mirth. Murtagh, too, is red-faced with good-humour. The little wood carving in his hands is long forgotten.

Jenny sets her knitting down with a most dignified sniff. 

“Ye’ll ken Laney Campbell didna e’er dare smack my wee brathair again, _thank_ ye verra much. See I willnae stick my neck out for _yer_ muckle heid again.”

“Och, aye, I was fair frightened of Laney Campbell when I was five,” Jamie tells Fergus, as one might a co-conspirator. 

His cheeks are rosy in the firelight. They match the boy’s, who has been neglecting their chessboard in favour of soaking in the familial chaos with wide-eyed rapture. Claire is curled up on the settee across from them, carefully penning notes into a small booklet. _Golden rod, primrose, feverfew, lady’s mantle_. Her medicine box lies open at her elbow. She has only been half-listening, the other time spent watching Jamie and Fergus’s chess lesson. 

“‘Tis yer move, laddie,” Jamie says.

“Oh! Sorry Milord.” 

“Now, see the knight there? Think where ye’ll want me in a few plays, aye?”

“Aye.”

Ian is still chuckling at his wife’s expense. “And in _conclusion_ ,” he says sweetly, “the people of Broch Morda kent long ago ne’er t’cross Miss Janet Fraser.” 

“Aye, well, ye’ll see it wasnae jest _me_ who got intae trouble then,” Jamie says.

“They were _both_ wee hellions,” says Murtagh, one careful eye on Claire. 

Claire is watching Jenny. There is still good humour in her face, but it has gentled into something unclear. She does not say, _you get into trouble_ now. She says,

“I’ve to fetch Kitty fer her feedin’.” It is neither loud nor quiet. “D’ye want tae hold her awhile after, Jamie?”

Jamie, startled up from his chessboard, looks uncertain for only a moment. Then his face gentles the same way his sister’s did. 

“Aye,” he says. He looks over at Claire, and she wants, suddenly, to reach over and touch him. _Later_ , she thinks.

He turns back to Fergus, reaching over with one long arm, and tweaks the boy’s ear just lightly enough that he laughs. 

vii.

She has been mindlessly washing her hands -- she thinks she’s done it four times by now -- when there is a gentle palm on her back. It is too small to be Jamie’s, but larger than Fergus’s. Claire keeps washing her hands, and the pressure remains. Eventually, she turns around.

Jenny has pulled her into a hug even before she realizes she is crying.

“‘M sorry,” Claire mumbles, into her neck. Jenny smells of pine needles and something starchy. Like Lallybroch does, but simpler. Claire is not quite sure what happened. Only that morning things had been fine. Wee Jamie had interrupted a variation on the promised early birthday rogering to remind his uncle that he was to take him fishing, and all of breakfast was spent in laughter. Murtagh and Ian kept teasing -- Jenny refused point blank to engage -- and Claire had been quick to laugh, shawl over her shoulders and porridge bowl in hand. They had joined forces in an effort to get Jamie to blush.

Jenny does not say anything now, but only continues her embrace. For such a small woman, she has a remarkably firm grip. 

But they all knew that, Claire thinks.

When she moves, she doesn’t release Claire fully. She only maneuvers them to sit on the bench beside the washing basin, facing the stables. Jenny keeps one arm around Claire’s shoulders and the other in their lap, hands entangled.

“I ken we all need a good hug sometimes,” she says, as one might say the most sensible, simplest thing in the world. 

The soft cadence of her voice makes the tight corners of Claire’s body loosen. “You’re good at giving them,” she says.

“Hmph,” Jenny says. “Couldnae grow up wi’ my fool brother an’ no’ learn, I suppose.”

It is delivered with exasperation, but concerning the warmest of skills, and, somehow, Claire laughs. Jenny pats her arm, like there is nothing much else amiss, like she knew the laugh was in there all along.

viii.

She finds Jamie out by the graveyard plot, feeling the sort of muzzy that one always does after a night of no proper sleep. Fergus had had a nightmare. She wonders at what point it became so easy for him to seek them out without hesitation. 

Anyhow -- he is a sweet sleeper, Claire thinks, but he _kicks_. Between that and the earlier half of the night, resoundingly occupied after Claire’s questionable decision to whisper saccharine things in her husband’s ear at dinner, she is now slow-moving and gritty-eyed.

“Hi,” Claire says in a quiet voice, looking down. Jamie’s sitting cross-legged on the grass. He’s still in his field clothes, vest-less and dirty-kneed, and sweat has made the hair at his temples extra curly. 

The little cross they’d stuck into the ground two weeks ago, just on the other side of his parents’ graves, stands sweetly just in front of him.

“Hi,” Jamie says back, which brings a smile to her face, tremulous as it may be. They have absorbed so much of each other, this last year. Only yesterday Claire noticed that her penmanship had become marginally more legible.

More loops at the ends of her letters, she thinks.

“I didnae mean tae come al -- t’no’ tell ye I was coming,” he says now, faltering. “I just -- I had tae come speak to her, suddenly.”

“It’s alright,” Claire says. He’s brought some of her primroses, she notices. They’ve been plucked perfectly -- no tears in their stems or petals missing. It’s quiet outside, save for the distant sounds of the Broch. Claire gets down on her knees, and takes Jamie’s hand in hers, and tucks herself into his side. “What were you telling her?”

He makes a small noise like a laugh, then plucks at the grass by his knee with one hand.

“That I -- I dinna ken what’ll happen in a year.” His voice is steady, but wavers all the same. Not the obvious kind. The sort only Claire can hear. “That I love her. That I love her mother, so very, very much.”

When the tears slip down Claire’s cheeks, they are not the hurting sort. Her hold on his left hand is so tight she’s suddenly worried that it might be painful for him, but he doesn’t let her pull away. It’s healed a lot, since the abbey, Claire thinks. Since they came home.

“I know,” she says, and rests her head on his shoulder, quiet in the afternoon sun.


End file.
